jack’s story
I never met him. He told me the story over the phone. There was real sorrow and regret in his voice. Regret that they hadn’t got to her in time, that she hadn’t shared her pain so they could stop her. Even after she jumped they could have saved her, if only she had held on another minute.
You see he already had the deaths of the other 2 girls on his conscience. He looked for them for 4 days but their bodies were never found, ever. He said the sharks had got them, the ones that hung around the whaling station 50 years ago. Many long years later he is still sad about those girls, the grief in his voice seeps down the phone line. It was his fault, he told them to go there. It was their pretty skirts, he said, the wind had caught them. They were just young girls, sightseeing, but he should have known about those full skirts, the ones they wore in the 50s. He desperately needed to find some kind of explanation, so he chose that one. It didn’t assuage his guilt. The recent drowning made him relive the pain all over again but he still needed to talk about it.
Because it went even further back to when his own friend took his life. That was his fault too. They tried to ring – but no-one got there in time, like this last one, just too late.
These days he is too old to go out in the boat so he mans the two-way radio in the local sea rescue. Still trying to save people and feeling bad about the ones he couldn’t then and still can’t. (Journal entry, 5 October, 2008)
